Category: Games

I like to set challenges for myself. Self-imposed, often timed challenges is a great way to learn new things, or experiment with different ideas. I find that it’s a great way to learn new concepts or test theories you might have; set yourself a challenge, and try to overcome it.

So, on a lazy Sunday, instead of playing video games, I challenged myself to make a platform game myself. Right away, I knew I wanted it to have an infinite number of procedurally generated levels, so you could never run out of new challenges. To make it more difficult for myself, I was not allowed to use any third party artwork or sound, everything had to be made for this challenge (no using scraps from the personal archives), and to top it off, I only allowed myself one day to complete it.That was pretty much my entire Sunday, but worth every second of it.

The screenshot is from the resulting game – Procformer Infinite – which you can play yourself, right here!

Challenge completed. Next! Perhaps improving or expanding the game with more features and obstacles? You never know what might happen on any given Sunday.

I signed up for #1GAM, to motivate myself to be as productive as possible. The challenge is to present 1 Game a Month, at least a prototype – which I wanted to do in 2016 anyway. It was almost as if it was meant to be!

My January entry is COMBATIVE. I wanted to do a take on classic turn-based fighting games. You have a champion, you go fight three rounds at a time, earn currency (which you presently can’t spend on anything), maybe get a power-up, and slowly progress your warrior’s level.

The trick is to time it so you use the right ability, at the right time, compared to your health and that of your opponent, while taking into consideration how many rounds of fighting you have left. It’s worth noting here, that the 3rd fight is always harder.

Between fighting, you can use and Bandages you may have to heal your champion. The higher level you are, the more health you get. Press the grey/black button at your own risk, as it resets your champion to a 1st level n00b.

Missing things, I will likely add: sound and music [DONE], and a way to spend gold on upgrades [DONE] of some kind.

I had a lot of fun with this prototype, and have a million ideas for building on it. From adding more power-ups and ways to spend gold, maybe allowing for multiple champions in your collections, and so on, but I am pretty happy with what I ended up with.

There will be a separate Patreon-only post, containing a downloadable version of the game for Windows/Android.

TL;DR: Get feedback on your projects, right from the prototype stage, and listen to inspiration when it presents itself.

I was watching The Walking Dead, when I had the idea for a game, where you are surrounded by increasingly large mobs of zombies, and you have to move around them, and take them out as they come at you. I imagined it as a top down game with a square level, kind of like Pac Manm, but in an industrial lot, or something along those lines. The idea flashed as a brief image in my mind, so not exactly a fully fleshed out game.

Sudden inspiration like this is something that should not be ignored. Even if the idea is simple. It might grow, after you plant it. So, the next day I made a prototype.

It’s simple enough. You use a mouse. Left click to move, right click to fire your gun (hold it down for continuous firing). You will die in the end, so it’s really just a matter of how big of a score you can get before you do. Explosive barrels can be used for extra points. There are occasional power-ups that spawn in, that may also help.

I call it “Don’t Touch”, because even a single bit of damage will immediately end the game. So stay alert!

The game made the rounds at the day job office, where a few coworkers “tested it” and gave me the best feedback ever: they went back for more, all on their own.

When people like something you make to the point where they want to keep playing it, and voluntarily offer up ideas of their own, that will feed even more inspiration.

When an inspirational feedback loop is created, and as a creative person, your job is to listen and take away all you can. Because most of the time, creative work is not done based on inspiration alone. In fact, the inspiration part has very little to do with writing a novel, recording an album, or creating a video game. It’s hard work, and if you want to finish your project, you can’t just sit around and wait for inspiration to strike.

So when it does strike, pay attention. I am sure you are busy, I certainly am, and I really don’t have time to work on another game. Unless I carve a little extra time, I’d otherwise spend on playing Fallout 4.

Yesterday, fueled by the reactions I’d gotten, I added a new power-up mode that gives you a temporary boost in rate of fire. Like equipping a machine gun with limited ammo. Shred those zombies hard, 10 seconds at a time! I also added something I’d not yet tried implementing in a game – a killing spree bonus based on a timer. If you kill 3+ zombies in a row, you get bonus points. If you take too long, it resets.

I like adding things and tweaking other things, based on the feedback I get, plus throwing in a challenge for myself, like adding the killing spree.

I am not sure where this particular prototype will go. I’m fine with it entertaining myself and a few friends for a few minutes here and there. You can play it too, of course. Maybe when Torgar’s Quest is done and launced, I will turn it into something more.